


we'd laugh at the ghost of our fears

by riduredo



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Adopted Child, Booker | Sebastien le Livre Needs Therapy, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Other, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, impulsive booker, lots of em - Freeform, one-sided Booker/Joe/Nicky, potential polyamory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:47:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29016072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riduredo/pseuds/riduredo
Summary: This was always going to be their ending.-“Book, are you fucking insane? Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Nicky shouts at him. Booker laughs. The sound rings hollow.“Sebastien?”-
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	we'd laugh at the ghost of our fears

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back with more angst! I swear I know how to write happy endings.  
> This is mainly Booker-centric, and there is a lot of pining over Joe and Nicky both as a unit and as individuals. This is your warning up front: that pining does not get resolved. There is no happy ending, except maybe Joe and Nicky.  
> This is my first multi-chapter that I've ever written, so please bear with me!  
> Title is from "Battle Cries" by The Amazing Devil. Each chapter title is from "Welly Boots" by The Amazing Devil.  
> 

Sebastien is cold. 

His throat is raw, and he knows his limbs are going red and ashen grey with frostbite, even though he cannot force his eyes open to confirm it. He sends a silent prayer for his sons to be protected. 

Sebastien le Livre dies on a completely average night, in a completely average, desolate, Russian snowscape.

-

_ “Nicolò!”  _

_ “Yusuf! Please, help me, oh god, Yusuf-”  _

Sebastien wakes with the pain of heartache in his chest, and the sensation of his blood rushing back to fingers only to be frozen and thawed at once. His ears ring with the call of voices he does not know. 

Sebastien lifts his thawing hands carefully to his eyes, brushing off the snow encrusted in his eyelashes. When he finally opens them, he watches in a stricken sense of wonder as the frostbite claims his fingers and creeps away in rapid succession. He is still cold. He is painfully aware of what his body is doing, but at the same time completely and utterly unknowing of  _ why _ . He manages to stumble up, half-walking, half-dragging himself across the snow. 

He does not know how much time passes before he gets… somewhere. A room where he can rest. He does not know how many times he should have died getting there. He does not know if he cares. 

He is accompanied by bloodied corpses, some of which he recognises. He did not pass anyone on the way here who could pose any danger to him, so he says a quick blessing over his brothers and finds the cleanest place he can to rest.

-

_ There are hands on his chest. They are warm, making him come alive, teaching his skin how to feel again. Lips, hot and familiar, drag across the pulse point on his throat. _

_ “Nicolò,” the lips murmur against him. He feels himself moan softly in acknowledgement, his head falling to the side.  _

_ His eyes rest upon his own face, sketched in an abandoned journal. _

Sebastien wakes.

-

Days become like minutes to him. 

He settles, temporarily, in the first town he had stumbled upon that did not carry any ghosts he could recognise. His miserable Russian and even more miserable amount of coin gets him a bowl of what he thinks may be broth and a blanket on an elderly woman’s floor for a few nights. He spends his days wandering, trying to find the voices that plague his dreams and bleed out of them. His searches are fruitless, until--

“ _ Sebastien! _ ” The voice is decidedly not French, and not Russian, and did anyone here even bother remembering his name? Sebastien turns toward it, and is met with a striking man who simultaneously looks like he belongs here and sticks out like a rose among daffodils. His eyes remind Sebastien of the ice which collects on the windowsills of the old woman’s home. He stands with the poise of a soldier, but the security of a man who knows he is in no real danger. In Sebastien’s experience, those two do not historically belong with one another. The man does not seem to be bothered by this. 

Alongside him stands the man he had seen the second night, and suddenly, Sebastien feels himself walking toward them, picking up speed as he goes. There is no tug in his chest, no thin red line connecting their bodies like a glowing thread; he is merely a simple man with decidedly not-simple dreams, and he can still feel this man’s hands blooming warmth under his skin. (His brain supplies, quietly, that it was actually  _ Nicolò’s  _ skin, and even quieter that this rose of a man next to him must indeed be Nicolò.) 

Probably-Nicolò’s lips widen into a grin, and the two pick up their speed toward Sebastien. He notes the woman walking beside them, and dimly recognises her from scattered moments between his other dreams. When the distance between them becomes negligible, he feels a hand clasp around his forearm, and he is being pulled into an embrace. 

A weight in his chest which he had been previously unaware of makes itself known.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can yell at me on Twitter @riduredo. 
> 
> Update will probably be up tomorrow!
> 
> EDIT: Update will definitely be up at some point before the end of the world.


End file.
